I started using OS/2 with v2.1 in the early '90s. I had to upgrade to what was at the time an enormous 8 MB RAM to get acceptable performance, but it was an awesome OS for multitasking, reliability, memory management (compared to DOS), scripting with REXX, etc.
Single input queue was a problem. The OS didn't freeze, but the UI did. I forget which version of OS/2, but they did eventually give you the capability to break out of the lock, without having to reboot.
It is sad that Microsoft's monopoly for licensing per CPU forced Windows 3.1 on the masses, whereas OS/2 2.1 was so much further ahead than Windows 3.1. Even though I am a big fan of the classic MacOS, OS/2 was arguably even more usable than old MacOS because of the object-oriented desktop.
I mean this was how Microsoft ran their company from Day 1 until the feds investigated them as a monopoly. They were nothing more than ruthless businessman who viewed both small and large competitors as adversaries to be extinguished. If you're going to feel sad for someone, feel sad for Gary Kildall, the deceased commentator for The Computer Chronicles, who invented CP/M. His system should have been the first OS for the IBM PC, but instead, IBM went with a pirated copy of CP/M, reverse engineered by Tom Paterson of Seattle Computer Products and renamed "IBM DOS" by Microsoft. 🖥️
Amazing to look back on this video and realize that in only a few years after this video was made, IBM washed their hands of OS/2. Sad as OS/2 was a good operating system. To think of the potential had it belonged to a company that kept improving it and actually worked to improve the public perception, software development, and worked to get OS/2 onto systems available to the public. IBM didn't really do much with it.
Windows NT was better and Microsoft had a big commitment to their 32 bit OS. With Windows NT 4.0 and DirectX 3 they even tried to care for games and game developers. This was maximized with Windows 2000. Windows 2000 did support DirectX until version 9.0c. Of course, OS/2 no longer mattered when Windows 2000 came out.
There's actually a big issue with OS/2 that John Soyring alluded to. He makes a point that the latest version (2.1 at the time) was able to run enhanced mode Windows applications (i.e. basically all the remaining apps that couldn't run on the older version). That was correct, and in fact, OS/2 ran Windows apps so well that it was oftentimes better than using Windows directly. The problem was, this made it almost pointless to write native OS/2 apps, and thus no one did. There was very little software for OS/2, certainly nothing in terms of a "killer app," and people figured this out. It became apparent there was little need to buy OS/2 if you were just running Windows apps anyway. This is basically what doomed OS/2. Sales were actually not bad in the early years but by the Warp era, it was de facto abandoned.
I'm not sure if the terminology was standardized by that point in time. There were some other episodes of this show and you'd also hear presenters use "multi-threading" to mean "doing multiple things at once."
That’s not even remotely true. OS/2 1.x was developed by Microsoft and IBM jointly. Gordon Letwin the architect was a Microsoft Employee. Presentation Manager was based on Windows which already existed as a Microsoft product. OS/2 PM is closely modelled on Windows 2.0. Between OS/2 1 and 2 Microsoft released Windows 3.0 which actually sold unlike OS/2 etc. Windows 3 Enhanced Mode is the ancestor of Windows 95. Microsoft broke up with IBM and kept Windows NT which would have been OS/2 3.0 for themselves and went on the Windows train.
@@camhusmj38 Yes, but before Microsoft's team went on to the OS/2 development team David Weise, a member of the Windows team and a critic of IBM, believed that he could restart the Windows project, and so he did by hiring Murray Sargent, a physics professor. Within a few months they had a prototype running Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The executives were impressed and gave the green light. Then of course there evidently was an exchange of knowledge between the two teams. Gates was then simply betting on two horses. He saw opportunities all the time and always has readjusted quickly. Remember that his mum on the board of IBM must have facilitated the joint effort, but in the end, Gates clearly had a double agenda. One with IBM and one for himself because he knew that Microsoft was way more flexible than IBM could ever be. So he must have known that he had the upper hand in general.
@@lindaoffenbach If you read Showstopper, you will see that Microsoft still didn’t realise that fact until after the 3.0 release. They hated IBM but still thought they had to obey them. It took time for people to realise that IBM didn’t have any aces in their pocket. OS/2 and MCA demonstrated that IBM no longer set the standard.
@@camhusmj38 The success of Windows 3.0 comes from the fact that the Windows developers managed to switch a 286 from protected mode back to real mode. This meant you could close Windows to run DOS programs again without having to restart the computer. This, along with its low hardware requirements, was Windows 3.0's breakthrough. Because Protected Mode made it possible to have enough RAM available for applications under Windows 3.0. Something earlier Windows versions, that still run in Real Mode, couldn't offer. Windows 3.0 also had real mode support, but that was immediately sacrificed with Windows 3.1 because it wasn't very useful.
@@lindaoffenbach"remember his mum was on the board of IBM" Mary Gates was never on the board of IBM. Not now, not then, not once, not ever. John Opel, chairman of IBM, and Mary Gates were both on the board of United Way. We know for a fact they never met until after IBM/Microsoft were together. Opel not only never met Mary, but Opel also held a ceremonial position that didn't have any power. The PC Project was likely something Opel knew nothing about. Seriously. Such abject nonsense.
OS/2 was so cool, I remember my mom used OS/2 Warp 3 at work back in the late 90s
I started using OS/2 with v2.1 in the early '90s. I had to upgrade to what was at the time an enormous 8 MB RAM to get acceptable performance, but it was an awesome OS for multitasking, reliability, memory management (compared to DOS), scripting with REXX, etc.
Could you run DPMI and VCPI DOS games with it or only real mode DOS Games?
18 MB for an OS which will run on 6 MB of RAM and it can basicly do everything a modern OS can.
Single Input Queue was a fatal flaw. If a program froze reading mouse input, the whole OS froze.
Single input queue was a problem. The OS didn't freeze, but the UI did. I forget which version of OS/2, but they did eventually give you the capability to break out of the lock, without having to reboot.
"What ever happen to OS/2?" :D
It is sad that Microsoft's monopoly for licensing per CPU forced Windows 3.1 on the masses, whereas OS/2 2.1 was so much further ahead than Windows 3.1. Even though I am a big fan of the classic MacOS, OS/2 was arguably even more usable than old MacOS because of the object-oriented desktop.
I mean this was how Microsoft ran their company from Day 1 until the feds investigated them as a monopoly. They were nothing more than ruthless businessman who viewed both small and large competitors as adversaries to be extinguished.
If you're going to feel sad for someone, feel sad for Gary Kildall, the deceased commentator for The Computer Chronicles, who invented CP/M. His system should have been the first OS for the IBM PC, but instead, IBM went with a pirated copy of CP/M, reverse engineered by Tom Paterson of Seattle Computer Products and renamed "IBM DOS" by Microsoft. 🖥️
Windows NT 3.1 was released two months after OS/2 2.1. Thus you could have a stable Windows OS if you could afford the memory requirements.
3:58 They've got the hats. Did they give a ten minute standing ovation to the WordPerfect logo?
So it turns out Edwin Black wasn't the best at making predictions.
Amazing to look back on this video and realize that in only a few years after this video was made, IBM washed their hands of OS/2. Sad as OS/2 was a good operating system. To think of the potential had it belonged to a company that kept improving it and actually worked to improve the public perception, software development, and worked to get OS/2 onto systems available to the public. IBM didn't really do much with it.
Windows NT was better and Microsoft had a big commitment to their 32 bit OS. With Windows NT 4.0 and DirectX 3 they even tried to care for games and game developers. This was maximized with Windows 2000. Windows 2000 did support DirectX until version 9.0c. Of course, OS/2 no longer mattered when Windows 2000 came out.
There's actually a big issue with OS/2 that John Soyring alluded to. He makes a point that the latest version (2.1 at the time) was able to run enhanced mode Windows applications (i.e. basically all the remaining apps that couldn't run on the older version). That was correct, and in fact, OS/2 ran Windows apps so well that it was oftentimes better than using Windows directly. The problem was, this made it almost pointless to write native OS/2 apps, and thus no one did. There was very little software for OS/2, certainly nothing in terms of a "killer app," and people figured this out. It became apparent there was little need to buy OS/2 if you were just running Windows apps anyway.
This is basically what doomed OS/2. Sales were actually not bad in the early years but by the Warp era, it was de facto abandoned.
FWIU, IBM was very difficult and bureaucratic to deal with. They apparently hamstrung OS/2 in the beginning as much as Microsoft did later on.
I don't think the NTFS file system of the Windows NT will ever catch on...
Starting at around 18:30 Mr. Wang demonstrates multi-tasking but mistakenly calls it "multi-threading".
Oof!
I'm not sure if the terminology was standardized by that point in time. There were some other episodes of this show and you'd also hear presenters use "multi-threading" to mean "doing multiple things at once."
os/2 need vms ..thus combing both makes windows NT 4.0 and WINDOWS 2000 then windows today
Microsoft hired IBM to develop OS/2, then they stole every good feature it had to put into Windows 95.
That’s not even remotely true. OS/2 1.x was developed by Microsoft and IBM jointly. Gordon Letwin the architect was a Microsoft Employee. Presentation Manager was based on Windows which already existed as a Microsoft product. OS/2 PM is closely modelled on Windows 2.0. Between OS/2 1 and 2 Microsoft released Windows 3.0 which actually sold unlike OS/2 etc. Windows 3 Enhanced Mode is the ancestor of Windows 95. Microsoft broke up with IBM and kept Windows NT which would have been OS/2 3.0 for themselves and went on the Windows train.
@@camhusmj38 Yes, but before Microsoft's team went on to the OS/2 development team David Weise, a member of the Windows team and a critic of IBM, believed that he could restart the Windows project, and so he did by hiring Murray Sargent, a physics professor. Within a few months they had a prototype running Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The executives were impressed and gave the green light. Then of course there evidently was an exchange of knowledge between the two teams. Gates was then simply betting on two horses. He saw opportunities all the time and always has readjusted quickly. Remember that his mum on the board of IBM must have facilitated the joint effort, but in the end, Gates clearly had a double agenda. One with IBM and one for himself because he knew that Microsoft was way more flexible than IBM could ever be. So he must have known that he had the upper hand in general.
@@lindaoffenbach If you read Showstopper, you will see that Microsoft still didn’t realise that fact until after the 3.0 release. They hated IBM but still thought they had to obey them. It took time for people to realise that IBM didn’t have any aces in their pocket. OS/2 and MCA demonstrated that IBM no longer set the standard.
@@camhusmj38 The success of Windows 3.0 comes from the fact that the Windows developers managed to switch a 286 from protected mode back to real mode. This meant you could close Windows to run DOS programs again without having to restart the computer. This, along with its low hardware requirements, was Windows 3.0's breakthrough.
Because Protected Mode made it possible to have enough RAM available for applications under Windows 3.0. Something earlier Windows versions, that still run in Real Mode, couldn't offer. Windows 3.0 also had real mode support, but that was immediately sacrificed with Windows 3.1 because it wasn't very useful.
@@lindaoffenbach"remember his mum was on the board of IBM"
Mary Gates was never on the board of IBM. Not now, not then, not once, not ever.
John Opel, chairman of IBM, and Mary Gates were both on the board of United Way. We know for a fact they never met until after IBM/Microsoft were together. Opel not only never met Mary, but Opel also held a ceremonial position that didn't have any power. The PC Project was likely something Opel knew nothing about.
Seriously. Such abject nonsense.
Pro sess or
OS 2= OH SHIT 2 YOU